A Simple Matter of Marcie
by DeejayMil
Summary: Spencer had expected babysitting Henry to go smoothly. After all, what could one seven year old do that a seasoned FBI agent couldn't handle? He'd been ready for anything... anything except Henry's new friend, Marcie.


If Reid wasn't a profiler, he might have missed the tell-tale signs of stress on JJ's face when she pulled the door opened and greeted him.

"Oh god, Spence, I was going to call you," she said with a wry smile, the corners of her eyes pinching. "Something's come up."

Reid paused on the threshold of her doorstep and fixed her with a nervous grin. "I'm early, I know, sorry. You know me. Punctual."

The sound of kids laughing filtered out of the house, followed by galloping footsteps. Kids, plural. Reid didn't get four PHDs without being able to do basic addition.

JJ's gaze flickered into the house and back onto him as she grinned sheepishly. "I forgot that Henry had a playdate today. I know, I can't ask you to babysit a kid you don't know, I can cancel my lunch. It's no problem."

Reid took a second to calculate every single thing that could go wrong with him being responsible for two seven-year-old boys for five hours, and ran that against the effect of added stress on .J if she missed this chance to get away and have fun. "I can do it," he said confidently, wishing that his voice hadn't taken on quite the high pitch that it did as he did so. "What could possibly go wrong?"

JJ raised her eyebrows and stepped aside, revealing a shrieking Henry overcome with excitement at seeing his favourite 'Uncle' and a….

"Uh," Reid managed. That was a lot of pink for one small person.

"Her name is Marcie. She likes digging, princesses and Henry." JJ looked way too amused to be as sorry as she was trying to convince him she was.

Oh boy.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He was carefully slicing the crusts off of two ham and cheese sandwiches, oddly disappointed by Henry and Marcie's pedestrian choice of lunch. He'd been responsible for so many of his own meals growing up he'd gained a sort of eccentric taste in food. Ham and cheese was as mind-numbingly boring as the sports channel.

Marcie had requested that neither sandwich have one iota of crust left on the bread, and since Reid had been too impressed by her use of the word iota to lecture her on the positive properties of the crust (there weren't any, but JJ had impressed upon him the importance of doing so), he was being especially careful about it.

Careful enough that it had managed to escape his notice that the house had suddenly become _very_ quiet. Reid froze, the knife skipping along the cutting board and slicing the soft bread into a slightly wonky triangle. Henry was bound to comment on that.

Sometimes Reid wondered if JJ asked him to babysit so much as penance for his pedantic habits that he kept passing along to her son. She'd taken Henry's decision to start wearing odd socks in stride; not so much his new obsession with right angles. Reid couldn't be prouder.

Padding his way quietly up to the hallway, he found the two blonde heads bent over some sort of milky pink concoction in a bowl on Henry's bedroom floor.

"What is that?" Reid asked, interest piqued as he tilted his head and examined the bowl that Marcie was stirring with one of Henry's plastic fire-trucks. Henry startled and guiltily shifted his arm to hide a large pink stain on his carpet that Reid was probably going to have to explain to JJ and Will.

"Nuthin," he stated with a forced innocence that had the corner of Reid's mouth twitching. Oh, if only all their suspects were so easy to profile.

"It's a love potion," announced Marcie, jutting out her chin in a stubborn smirk. "To make Henry fall in love with me."

Reid blinked at her, completely lost. Was this a thing that all girls did?

"Okay," he said slowly. "Don't… don't drink that." Marcie's mouth did a thing which suggested that if Reid left that room, the contents of the bowl would be on and in Henry before he could get down to the hall. "It… it won't work without magic." JJ really owed him after this one.

Marcie's eyes widened. "Magic isn't real."

"Yes it is," Henry disagreed. "Uncle Spence does magic all the time." He picked up the bowl with hands that wobbled terrifyingly. Reid took it quickly, his eyes skimming the mess around where the bowl had sat and putting it in the 'will deal with before JJ gets home' pile.

"If you come eat your sandwiches, I'll show you real magic," he said, adding a nonchalant tone to his voice that he hoped suggested that he did magic as a daily thing. It seemed to work as the two kids bolted down the hall, bouncing off walls in their excitement to eat the crustless abominations he'd left on the counter.

As soon as they were out of sight, Reid awkwardly walked the bowl of gunk to the sink and tipped it in, reaching for his phone the moment his hands were free.

"Princess of Perpetual Pedantry," Garcia answered cheerily. "What can I do you for, Sweetcake?"

"Did you ever make love potions?"

There was a startled silence on the other end of the phone. "Honey, you know they aren't real things, right? I know Harry Potter was very, very convincing but what have we told you about believing everything you read?"

"I'm babysitting," Reid cut in. "Henry has a friend over and she made a love potion out of… shampoo and food colouring I think. And maybe salt. To make Henry love her. Is this something girls do?" He left the unspoken 'please help me' hang in the air, knowing Garcia would pick up on it with her usual quickness.

"Only the cool ones." Garcia sounded impressed. "How old is this kid?"

"Seven. Her name is Marcie, and she likes digging and princesses." He stuck his head out the bathroom and listened for appropriate 'Henry and Marcie not being naughty' noises. Giggles and the clattering sound of a plastic plate hitting the table echoed reassuringly back at him. "She's wearing, by my last count, eight different shades of pink."

Now Garcia did sound sorry. "Oh dear. I bet that's hard for you." A snuffling sound from the other end of the line had him frowning at the phone. She was laughing at him and trying to hide it. "Indulge them. Make a better love potion."

"You said they're not real."

"You have a _lot_ to learn about girls, little genius. Now go have fun. Ciao." She hung up on him, leaving him just as out of his depth as before.

Were all the women in his life conspiring against him?

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"I don't like potatoes." That obstinate chin jut was back on Marcie's face. Reid made a mental note to stress to JJ the importance of having only sons.

"I'm not asking you to eat the potato," Reid stated, holding up the offending vegetable by the straw he'd 'magically' stabbed through it. "Just to appreciate the skill it took to put a straw through a dense surface such as the skin of this potato."

Two sets of unimpressed eyes met his. "Boring," Marcie announced. Henry nodded in agreement, eyes flickering from his friend back to Reid.

Reid wasn't very good at girls or talking to people or anything that didn't really involve academia or profiling, but he didn't have to be to see that maybe Marcie didn't need a love potion to charm Henry. "You're bossy," he told the girl with a frown. Henry giggled at the shocked expression on Marcie's face.

"You can't call me bossy, you're an adult. You have to be nice."

"Yes I can, and no I don't." Reid lifted his trousers slightly, exposing his mismatched socks. "I have odd socks. Adults don't have odd socks. So I can be rude if I want." He poked his tongue out for added emphasis.

Marcie laughed, Henry joining her a moment later after careful consideration. He was going to be a heartbreaker when he was older, he already had the knack. "He can make tornadoes in a bottle," Henry pointed out. "That's not boring."

Reid picked up JJ's lemon scented dishwashing liquid and a bottle of water, brandished them both. "Weather at will!" he proclaimed. "Chemistry magic!" He spun the bottle energetically, showing it to the kids when the funnel formed in the middle.

Marcie narrowed her eyes at the bottle. "Alright, not boring," she agreed. "Can we make love potions now?"

The girl was obsessed. What else do girls like?

"Do you like rainbows?" he asked desperately, reaching.

Henry pulled a face, clearly not quite invested enough to follow them down that path. "I'm thirsty," he told Reid firmly. _Good work, Henry,_ he thought with a grin. Divert attention away from the boring option and towards one a little more fulfilling. He was teaching him well.

An idea hit him moments later. Good work, Henry, _indeed_.

"Do you want to know a real love potion?" he asked them both, observing them sit upright in the chair and watch him intently.

"Yes!" Marcie cried, wiggling in her seat. "I told you they were real," she added as a quieter aside to Henry.

Reid rifled through the pantry, knowing that what he wanted was in there somewhere, hidden behind the healthy snacks and sensible meal options. Ah, there.

He flourished the Nutella container. "Chocolate!"

Henry's eyebrows bunched together in a look more at home on Hotch's face than JJ's son. "That's not a potion." He sounded betrayed.

Marcie kicked him under the table. "Shh, or we won't get any," she warned him softly.

Reid was already working, grabbing a saucepan out and measuring the Nutella into the pan. "It will be," he instructed, adding milk.

Ten minutes of clattering around later and Reid had placed two frothy hot chocolates in front of the children, complete with a handful of colourful sugared cereal that JJ would flip if she knew he'd brought with him. "Love potions," he told them, sipping his own and deliberately leaving a milky line across his upper lip for them to giggle at. "Chocolate releases the chemical dopamine from the brain, which gives you the feeling of being in love. More chemistry magic!"

Marcie beamed at Henry who grinned back with his hair in his eyes.

Maybe girls weren't so bad after all.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"Bye Uncle Spence," Henry said, throwing his arms around Reid and leaving a milky trace on his cheek where he kissed him. "I had fun."

"Even making silly love potions?" Reid asked, unwinding sticky arms from his neck and ruffling the blonde head.

Henry blushed. "I only did that to make Marcie happy. She's weird like that. She's my friend, I don't need chocolate to love her."

JJ made strangled kind of noise that meant she was either overcome with emotion or she'd just stubbed her toe, and pulled Henry into an awkward one armed hug. "Thanks for today, Spence," she said, eyes glittering. "Although, one day you'll have to tell me what happened to the rug in Henry's room."

Reid shrugged, winding his scarf around his neck and dramatically stepping out the door. He winked, flourishing his arm. "Magic, of course!"


End file.
